Terry Denton is the President of Travel Leaders of Fort Worth, Rowlett and Tyler, Texas and the Publisher of the blog Travel By Terry. In a recent blog post, Denton responded to some of the sensationalized news stories that paint an inaccurate portrait of tourism in Mexico.

“Imagine how I feel,” wrote Denton, “laboring away in the vineyards of travel and being subjected to a flood of negative news reports about Mexico, a country of incredible beauty, rich history and some of the finest people God ever planted on this planet.”

In order to correct such negative portrayals in the media, Denton measures Mexican tourism by three metrics:

Geography: Noting that Mexico has over 2500 municipalities and security problems have been concentrated in just 18 of them.

Statistics: Such as the fact that 23.4 million international travelers visited Mexico in 2011, an all-time record.

Experience: Denton shares his own personal experience of travelling in Mexico: “I have been traveling there for over 25 years, multiple times many years, without ever once being threatened or harassed. My story is but one of millions as the statistics above corroborate.”

Denton has started the hashtag #mexicomaligned to raise awareness in social media of misconceptions about travel in Mexico and to provide positive, factual testimonials about travel and tourism.